After years of agnosticism, political scientist Charles Murray found religion at 82

Political scientist Charles Murray describes himself as spiritually “handicapped.”

The realm of spiritual experience that others seem to navigate with ease has been cordoned off from him, he told the Deseret News in a recent interview.

Yet, after decades as a self-described agnostic, Murray has begun to confront religious questions he once regarded as out of bounds in the only way he knew how — through reason and scholarly inquiry.

Murray, who is now 82 and is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, first gained attention with his 1984 book “Losing Ground,” in which he argued that welfare programs often worsened poverty and sparked intense policy debates. In 1994, along with author Richard Herrnstein, Murray co-authored “The Bell Curve,” which examined the role of intelligence in